ATI Demonstrates How Open Source Tools Can Allow Artists to
Jumpstart Their Production Pipeline and Render
Off-Line Content in Real-Time

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 5, 2003--
ATI Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:
ATYT) (TSX: ATY) will demonstrate
tools that enable digital content creators and artists to take content
prepared for off-line rendering, authored in their tool of choice, and
render it interactively, with hardware acceleration at this year's
Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. This demonstration
of open tools will show artists and studios how they can jumpstart
their production pipeline with leading-edge hardware.

The digital content creation (DCC) community has long been
interested in the promise of hardware-accelerated rendering, to speed
up their production pipeline. Similarly, the interactive and gaming
communities have been interested in leveraging the digital assets
created for film and video to expand the real-time visual experience.
The acceleration of unmodified offline content, however, has been
hindered by a lack of hardware features, in particular full floating
point capabilities in graphics hardware, as well as the
incompatibility of the tools and languages used in the individual
communities.

The launch of the RADEON(TM) 9700 PRO in July of 2002 represented
a watershed in the graphics industry. Running full floating point
computations at full speed at eight pixels per clock, ATI delivered
the first hardware with the power and features necessary to render
unmodified off-line content. At SIGGRAPH 2002, ATI demonstrated how to
translate shaders written in the RenderMan Shading Language into
hardware-friendly instructions. For the first time ever, an interface
used in film and video production, was executing interactively without
approximation or special-casing.

The demonstration of cinematic rendering in real time, will show
application developers the process of translating traditional off-line
shaders, such as those authored in 3D Studio Max, Maya(R), and the
Renderman Shading Language, into industry-standard,
hardware-accelerated standard APIs such as DirectX(R) and OpenGL(R).
In addition, plug-ins for 3D Studio Max and Maya(R) demonstrate how to
generate interactive previews of the native materials and lights
directly within the viewports of each application. ATI will be
providing the source code for these tools and demonstrations to ISVs
upon request with royalty free licensing terms.

"We have begun sharing this demonstration with studios and
independent software vendors (ISVs). We want to share our experience
with others in the industry and collaborate with others to move the
industry forward as a whole. We are excited to see the breadth of
creativity and innovation it enables in the community," said Rick
Bergman, Senior Vice President, Marketing and General Manager,
Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc. "ATI is committed to supporting
standard hardware interfaces, DirectX(R) and OpenGL(R), and working
with our software partners to support their own interfaces. The
standard higher level hardware interfaces, DirectX(R) High Level
Shader Language (HLSL) and the GL2 Shading Language, form the
foundation for true cinematic rendering."

"It is great to see ATI employing existing industry standards and
open-source tools to help remove production barriers," said Mark
Brown, CTO, Rhythm and Hues Studios. "ATI has demonstrated how our
existing shaders can be moved over into hardware shading with
relatively little effort. This will allow shading to be done in
real-time, as opposed to previously in a software renderer. The switch
to hardware can be made seamlessly, resulting in a significant
production savings. We look forward to working closely with ATI to
advance this important technology."

"Over the past year, we've seen an impressive transformation in
the capabilities of workstation-class graphics cards," said Paul
Salvini, CTO of Side Effects Software. "ATI's tools will help software
developers take full advantage of these new capabilities by providing
a broad set of examples on which to build. Side Effects Software is
pleased to support ATI's efforts and the heightened visual experience
that it will deliver in our Houdini family of products."

Company Background

ATI Technologies Inc. is a world leader in the design and
manufacture of innovative 3D graphics and digital media silicon
solutions. An industry pioneer since 1985, ATI is the world's foremost
visual processor unit (VPU) provider and is dedicated to deliver
leading-edge performance solutions for the full range of PC and Mac
desktop and notebook platforms, workstation, set-top and digital
television, game console and handheld markets. With 2001 revenues in
excess of US $1 billion, ATI has more than 1,900 employees in the
Americas, Europe and Asia. ATI common shares trade on NASDAQ (ATYT)
and the Toronto Stock Exchange (ATY).

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and/or registered trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All other
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